Fluid Mechanics for Chemical Engineers: with Microfluidics, CFD, and COMSOL Multiphysics 5, 3rd edition

Coverage of key fluid mechanics topics

Building on the text that earned Choice Magazine's prestigious Outstanding Academic Titles award, Wilkes offers masterful coverage of key fluid mechanics topics including computing turbulent flows, bubble motion, two-phase flow, fluidisation, microfluidics, electro-kinetic flow effects, and computational fluid dynamics. Throughout, he presents more than 300 problems of incrementally greater difficulty, helping students build mastery through realistic practice.

Wilkes starts with a macroscopic approach, providing a solid foundation for sizing pumps and operating laboratory and field scale equipment. The first four chapters derive equations needed to size chemical plant equipment, including pipes in packed beds, pumping installation, fluid flow measurement, filtration, and cyclone separation. Next, he moves to a microscopic approach, introducing key principles for modeling more advanced systems and solving industry or graduate-level problems. These chapters start with a simple derivation of the Navier-Stokes equation (NSE), and then introduce assumptions for various flow geometries, helping students reduce equations for easy solution - analytically, or numerically with COMSOL. Updated COMSOL examples include boundary layer flow, non-Newtonian flow, jet flow, lathe flow, lubrication, momentum diffusion, flow through an orifice plate parallel plate flow, turbulent flow, and more.